Until 16 April 1968 any doctor could prescribe heroin and cocaine to any of their patients. The following extract describes the prescribing of heroin by one doctor, Lady Frankau and its effect on the extent of addiction in the 1960s.…

Doctors and drug workers must now grill drug users about crimes they have committed in the last month in a bid to monitor their progress away from addiction. Diane Taylor on a scheme that has been met with trepidation by…

The public punishment of Dr Colin Brewer at the end of what became known as the Stapleford Case was a sad, expensive and embarrassing debacle which highlighted serious rifts in drug treatment says Tom Carnwath Doctors at war (PDF)

The second class service experienced by drug users in many hospitals represents a missed opportunity to help thousands of people with drug problems. David Henstock describes how one hospital buckled the trend. Emergency: breathing life into hospital drug services (PDF)

The way drug users are dealt with by GPs has transformed in the last three decades. Dr Chris Ford, who retired earlier this year from her post as one of Britain’s specialist drug misuse GPs, looks back at how things have changed in…

Despite recent initiatives to increase the involvement of GPs in the treatment of drug users Chris Ford and Jenny Keen argue that Models of Care ignores all this, writes doctors out of the script and so, is fatally flawed. Models…

It’s official, not enough English GPs are in shared care schemes (SCS). Only 20% of GPs are sharing while the NHS wants 30%. With many regions not even out of the starting blocks, Marion Walker shares the secrets of Berkshire’s…